


Love is as Strong as Death

by Erato_Muse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Christmas Eve, Godric's Hollow, Kissing, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25550914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erato_Muse/pseuds/Erato_Muse
Summary: Harry contemplates love and death in the graveyard at Godric's Hollow on Christmas Eve, releases long buried emotions,  and realizes the depth of his feelings for Hermione
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	Love is as Strong as Death

**Author's Note:**

> Here is the repository of 13 years's worth of Harry/Hermione feels upon reading Deathly Hallows. Something about their bond really transforms from friendship to more, during the Horcrux hunt, in a very organic way, and I hope this story captures an ember of that magic. 
> 
> The Charles Dickens quote is from his novel 'Great Expectations', and the line 'Love is as strong as death' is from the Biblical text the Song of Solomon or Song of Songs

The air in the graveyard was sharp, dry, and cold against Harry’s face. It was the kind of cold that seeps into your skin and swells your flesh tightly and painfully. It was not the same kind of cold as the mountain air at Hogwarts. This air’s texture belied that the ocean was relatively close, closer than at Hogwarts, that the land here terminated at the water, and the air carried a rumor of freshness and salt even when it was laden with Christmas snow.  
There was nothing about Godric’s Hollow that Harry recognized as familiar, but his body felt strangely grounded. Not with joy, elation, the prospect of deeper acquaintance or future happiness did he recognize Godric’s Hollow as home. Home didn’t speak to those emotions, residents of the skin, the brain, and the heart. Home spoke to the bones.  
Harry read his parents’ names on the headstones. Who had paid for the cold stone monuments? Had there been a funeral? Who had attended? Dumbledore? Lupin? Sirius was in Azkaban by then, or wherever people were held before they were imprisoned on that fortress in the sea. His parents had been buried, by someone, and here they had lain all this time, as if waiting for him. The graves were like the Mirror of Erised in reverse: one had shown him what he most wanted, this showed him all that he had left.  
The white stone of their headstones was lighter and brighter than the more ancient names that populated the graveyard, to be read from their weathered, faded or darkened, mossy stones. The headstones for Lily and James were a greyish-white not too different from the snow that was falling in humble, patient flurries on Harry’s head, shoulders, and nose, falling on him and Hermione. Her head was on his shoulder, her hair soft and earthy smelling, her hand was in his, soft and warm. Their hands were warm as long as they held onto each other.  
“ ‘The last enemy to be defeated is death’. But…that’s a Death Eater idea…what is that doing here?” Harry said, frantically.  
Half of his mind thought maybe this was a code meant for other saboteurs, and all a ploy. Maybe he didn’t want to believe that this was really where what remained of his parents lay, and had been all this time.  
“No, no, its not meant like that. Its from the Bible. It means…living beyond death. The soul. Eternity,” Hermione said.  
He had never been told that his parents were in Heaven. He had never asked about such things. He celebrated Christmas at Hogwarts…the Dursleys were nominally Anglican, but not overtly religious…Harry realized how little he had thought about eternity, knew now that he did not know what he believed. Magic existed, what could one be certain of or rule out? He looked at Hermione, and wondered what she believed. He felt a strong, surging, gripping feeling that felt like a sudden fever coming on. It was the strongest thing he had ever felt, stronger than the bestial jealousy he had felt when he saw Ginny kissing Dean and realized that the little girl who fancied him was prettier than ever and had moved on, left him like Sirius had left him behind the Veil, left him like Lupin was always blowing in and out, turning up unexpectedly and absent for long periods of time without even a letter, the way even parts of himself had left him, parts of himself that felt like little brothers who had been placed in separate foster homes and never heard from again, impossible to trace.  
It was not Hermione’s absence that he was so strongly aware of, it was her presence. He squeezed her hand as if asking it to stay put, telling her hand that it was needed, as he began to cry. He had not cried in so long, he had not recognized the swimming feeling in his head and the quavering heaves in his stomach. Then he felt his eyes begin to burn, and a wavy caul appeared between him and the names ‘Lily Evans Potter’, ‘James Fleamont Potter’ and himself, and he could not see. The snow continued to fall, and it was sharply cold compared to his hot face, burning eyes, and the tears that fell in hot rivulets down his face. A lifetime of tears, forbidden to fall. Tears for his parents, for Dumbledore, for Sirius, for himself, or those orphaned little brothers of himself that he had lost along the way.  
Hermione’s arm rested against his, and her head stayed on his shoulder, her hand in his, as he wept. He wanted to stop, but found it was not so easy as that. He wanted to be under the cold, snow carpeted earth with his parents, but that feeling was not as strong as the certainty like a second heartbeat that he had to go on. Not, any longer, for the sake of the prophecy. He had been on this road since he was one year old, this was his life, and his bones knew it was not the end. His mind and heart were fatigued, his bonesense knew that it was not his time. He let that intuition take over, let it guide him into Hermione’s arms. She held him as his shoulders shook, and his tears fell. No one else had ever seen him like this. He didn’t want anyone else to see him like this, only her.  
When they pulled apart, Harry wiped his face and sniffed, righted his glasses, and once more he could see the names of his parents.  
“Ginny never cries,” he said, as if he had failed to live up to the standard she set when he broke up with her at Dumbledore’s funeral.  
“Everyone’s different,” Hermione said, and then after a pause, added, “ ‘Heaven knows, we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.’”  
“Is that…from the Bible, too?” Harry asked.  
Hermione laughed a little, and said, “No! That’s Charles Dickens!”  
“Oh…” Harry said. “I haven’t really read much of either.”  
“That’s all right. You’re more…the sporty type,” Hermione said.  
Harry laughed. He was still crying, but laughing, too.  
“I’m sorry that she’s not here. That would be more…appropriate, wouldn’t it?” Hermione said. When Harry looked uncomprehending, she clarified, “Ginny.”  
“She’s…” he began, but he couldn’t very well say, ‘She’s not you.’  
He couldn’t very well tell Hermione, on the most surreal Christmas of their lives, at the foot of his parents graves, amidst the remains of who knew how many other of his forebears, in the silence of snow and graves, that he had been wrong about everything.  
Love and happiness weren’t what he had assumed, just like home wasn’t the elation that he always felt at the sight of Hogwarts after summer holidays away from it. The excitement that he felt at spending another year in the enclave of wizardry, away from the Dursleys, was not the same bonesense recognition that he felt in this, the village of his birth, the way the distracting conflict of dreaming about and wanting Ginny when he knew that he shouldn’t, and the fizzy elation of kissing her in secluded corners of the castle, feeling her lips on his and her body warm, small, and ardent beneath his in soft, sunwarmed grass by the lake, was not like this…feeling Hermione’s hand in his, and feeling safe even when he was crying. He had reached for whiskey instead of water, run from truth to daydreams, chasing happiness he had never known.  
“They feel real now. Like…they really lived. Somehow, even when I look at pictures of them, even when people talk about them, they don’t feel real,” Harry said.  
“Sometimes we need to see tangible proof of something. Like, a relic of a saint. Its not that we don’t believe…we just need something to look at, or touch,” Hermione said.  
“But, it hurts more now,” Harry said.  
“Because you love them,” Hermione said.  
“Love doesn’t hurt. Its happy. It makes you forget everything. Right?” Harry said.  
She gave him a sad smile, and was clearly holding whatever she really wanted to say back. Where was the indomitable girl who insisted, shouted down, didn’t relent, always persisted, even when he and Ron paused their friendship with her because they didn’t agree with her point? He felt a pang of empathy. Was that Hermione, the girl he knew at Hogwarts, a lost little sister to the girl standing before him now? The moon shone down on her skin, on the tears clinging demurely to her eyelashes, to her lips curled into a sad smile, and faint silver light from the moon shining on the snow was held in her brown eyes. He had always known that Hermione was clever, it was a fact of life…but their journey had changed her. She was now not only clever, she was wise. She had always been so quick to tell him and Ron what she thought, what she knew…but this new restraint made him wonder what she was thinking. This new enigmatic streak made Harry want to look at her, look long at her, as if figuring out how her thoughts were woven.  
“ ‘Love is as strong as death’,” Hermione said, and her voice was silver and clear, it was like Harry had never heard it before. It didn’t make him forget, the way Ginny’s kisses did. It was like a bell in the heart of a city, in a tower on a hill, calling him to that tower.  
Harry didn’t know what Hermione was quoting, this time, but the words stayed with him, chiming in his head. They were so like Dumbledore’s assertion that love was the power which Harry possessed that Voldemort knew not, that the pain he felt was the evidence that he could love. Death had torn his life apart, how could love, which had never seemed to make a difference one way or another, be powerful, as Dumbledore had said, be as strong as death, as Hermione had said?  
His mind argued…but a deeper sense disagreed, and seemed to grab and hold him. Love makes people protect others, as his mother had protected him. He was alive, she was in the cold, snow-dusted ground…it had made a difference, her love. It had saved him, as surely as Voldemort’s curse had stolen Lily’s life…and only her death had sealed the magic of her love. It wasn’t fair, but it was so. Two different forces were at work, and his life had been situated on a delta between their currents, love and death. Hermione’s hand was steady in his, as he thought. He regretted the times that he had pushed her away.  
The tears threatened to start afresh, but he didn’t want to cry again. He looked into Hermione’s eyes. They were not hard and blazing, but soft and welcoming, like dark earth, like the earth that embraced the fallen witches and wizards of Godric’s Hollow, and gave them gentle rest beneath the whispering snow. There were tears in Hermione’s eyes, too, tears that did not fall, tears like crystal beads gracing her eyelashes, and Harry felt grateful that she felt even an echo of what he did, that he could be this vulnerable around her, and she was strong enough to understand. She and himself were the only warm, living things amongst the dead, and he was grateful not only that she had not left him, but that she, herself, was by his side.  
He’d kissed Ginny for the first time in front of fifty people. He kissed Hermione as the snow fell with a subtle, soft, dusting sound, on his parents’ engraved names on their headstones. It was brief, and a bit dry. Both their lips were chapped. His skin sang as her fingertip graced his cheek, and wiped away his tears.  
“We should go, now, Harry. We have to keep moving,” she said softly, with a considerate hesitance to tear him away.  
He nodded in accordance, and took her hand in his, once again.


End file.
